


The Raven, the Rooks, and the Lantern

by SharpestRose



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-10
Updated: 2011-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 05:36:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven and Charles find a secret world inside the wardrobe in the spare room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Raven, the Rooks, and the Lantern

"If we see anybody I'll change back before they see me, I promise."

 

"But what if you don't do it fast enough and they _do_ see you? I always feel rotten about having to make people forget you. It's hard enough to make Mother remember you when she doesn't really. Doing the other bit as well at the same time makes me _tired_."

 

"Oh, stop complaining! We've found a secret forest inside a house and all you can do is _complain_. I want some sunshine on my real skin for a change, and there's nobody here so stop _worrying_."

 

Tumnus heard the children before he saw them. He'd made a habit of walking home the long way from time to time, ever since that business a few years ago which had left the lamp-post twisted and bent. There was always a chance that something else strange might present itself, and after the state that the last poor boy had arrived in Tumnus thought it was worth an occasional detour to make sure that any arrivals had a proper greeting.

 

It was a little boy and a little girl, and from the way they were bickering Tumnus guessed that they were probably brother and sister. The boy was wearing a neatly ironed shirt and trousers, the sort of outfit Tumnus thought of as 'visiting clothes'. What was visible of his skin was the same pale pink as the Queens and Kings. 

 

His sister, who wasn't wearing clothes, had skin in the vivid blue of some of the naiads Tumnus had known, and dainty scales in pretty patterns. Her bright hair was more like a dryad in autumn than like a naiad, though. But Tumnus had long ago ceased to be surprised by anything that might be found in the woods near the lamp-post, let alone a little girl who looked like a tree-spirit and a water-spirit all at once.

 

The two children saw him a few seconds after he saw them. The girl gave a start of surprise and abruptly transformed into a blonde-haired, pink-skinned version of herself in a cotton skirt and blouse. The boy frowned and put his fingertips against his temple, and a moment later Tumnus felt a sort of tickle inside his own skull.

 

"No need to cast a forgetting spell on me, I assure you," he told the boy. He didn't bother to point out that casting magic on somebody without permission was extremely impolite; better for children alone in a strange place to be self-protective and skittish than the naive trust that Lucy had placed in Tumnus on their first meeting. He still shuddered at the memory of that from time to time.

 

The boy lowered his fingertips from his temple, clearly confused.

 

"You've got hooves," the girl observed, shifting back to her blue and gold-red shading. "I bet they're better for walking than shoes. I hate it when Charles makes me wear shoes."

 

She cocked her head to one side, studying Tumnus' legs intently. After a beat her own legs changed shape, becoming perfect copies of his. She stamped her new hooves against the grass happily.

 

"Might I ask where two such talented young creatures come from?" Tumnus enquired.

 

"Mrs Macready said that there were other children in the Professor's house, because of the war," the boy -- Charles, his sister had called him -- said. "So while Mother and the Professor were talking, Raven and I went to look for them."

 

"We found trees, in the wardrobe in the spare room," Raven interrupted. "We looked in there in case the others were hiding, and found you instead."

 

"Well, I am glad to hear that the population of Spare Oom is more diverse than I had been led to believe. It sound like a dull sort of place, I must confess," replied Tumnus. "And you say the war goes on still? King Edmund will have questions about that, I'm sure. Lord Erik refuses to speak about it at all, but many members of the Court at Cair Paravel worry about him and would welcome knowledge of the state of things, however grim."

 

The children looked at Tumnus, their faces wearing matched expressions of incomprehension. Tumnus felt abashed.

 

"Sorry. I'll start properly, from the beginning, and explain as we walk."

 

\---

 

 _The Kings and Queens are hunting the White Stag. They come to the lamp-post, and it’s all twisted up and bent and strange and there’s someone curled near the base of it, right on the edge of where the forest grows thicker and where they think the Stag went._

 __

 _But there’s no time to chase for it now, because the someone is a boy, maybe only a little older than Peter was when he first became King, and he’s in a dead faint and looks thin and hurt and sick._

 __

 _They take the boy back to the hunting camp and put him in one of the tents to rest until he wakes up, their plans to catch the White Stag and ask for a wish all but forgotten._

 __

 _“Looks like he could use a wish more than we could, right now,” Edmund remarks. There are old memories, things he hasn’t thought about for years and years, stirring in his head. The numbers tattooed on the boy’s scarred and bruise-marked arm have conjured up strange and terrible words like_ **_Jerrys_ ** _and_ **_Nazis_ ** _and_ **_pogroms_ ** _and_ **_camps_ ** _. And Edmund can’t remember what all of them mean, not properly, but he remembers well enough what someone looks like when they’ve been at the scant mercies of a tyrant._

 __

 _“I thought we were the only humans in Narnia,” Lucy muses._

 __

 _Edmund thinks of the lamp post, twisted and bent like might be done to a strip of paper._

 __

 _“Maybe he’s something else,” Edmund suggests to his sister._

 

\---

 

"So it's been two years since Erik arrived, and seventeen years since your Queens and Kings arrived, yet it sounds like almost no time at all has gone past back in the world we came from," Charles muses.

 

He's entranced by Tumnus' shelf of books, taking them down one after the other to look through them. Raven has fallen asleep in the armchair. She looks even younger when she's asleep, and Tumnus can't help but think again of Lucy when she was young. 

 

Raven's small legs, curled up onto the cushion of her seat, are still shaped into those of a faun. That reminds Tumnus of Lucy too, of a much more grown-up Lucy, and the conversations they've had about the future and about children who might yet be born.

 

"I'll be twenty-five on my next birthday," Lucy had pointed out, the last time they saw one another. "So I'm sure that pretty soon Peter is going to have to give up on his stupid rule about me not having any serious suitors until after Susan's engaged. Susan's not going to do _that_ until she absolutely has to, I'm sure of it. She's much too fond of having lots of different lovers to flirt with and get into complicated intrigues over. She'd lose all her hobbies if she had to pick just one of the bunch. And Su can be a lot of frustrating things, but she's never been a hypocrite, so it isn't like she's going to tell me off for choosing someone from the forest instead of some foreign prince. Midsummer revels are no less respectable than most of the nonsense she gets up to at the palace balls, and _I_ think the revels are a good deal more interesting besides. Better dances, for one thing."

 

Tumnus pulls his thoughts out of memory and back into the present. If Charles is as capable of rummaging around in other people's thoughts as he seems to be, Tumnus should probably stop daydreaming about Lucy. It's not that he thinks the boy would go telling tales to King Peter or Queen Susan, it's just that --

 

"Some thoughts are private. Don't worry, I understand," Charles says, looking up from the latest book he's pulled from the shelf. "I never listen when boys think about girls or girls think about boys, anyway. It's always all gooey and boring in their heads, then. Yuck."

 

Tumnus chuckles at the disdainful expression on Charles' face. "I shall do my best to dwell on topics of more interest to you, young sir," he promises. "Though since we'll be heading to Cair Paravel in the morning, you should prepare yourself for a castle's worth of boring thoughts."

 

\---

 

Edmund questions Charles at length, but it seems that the boy -- like Edmund himself, in his own hazily-remembered childhood -- is aware of the war mostly as a source of personal frustration and larger background activity, rather than a situation to be monitored and researched.

 

The specifics of the conflict are unlikely to give anything more than slight nuance to their knowledge of Erik's past, anyway. He is only a little younger than the last of the Narnian generations who grew up under the shadow of fear and loss; his silence and sporadic rages and haunted eyes are nothing unfamiliar. There will never be an easy cure for such injuries, even if Charles had been able to provide Edmund with the full details of what led up to Erik's arrival at the lamp-post two years ago.

 

"I doubt he came through the same way that Raven and I did, because I think that was the same way you and your brother and sisters came through," Charles says now to Edmund. "And Mrs Macready didn't say anything about you being missing, so you haven't been gone long enough for her to even notice. So if Erik goes back to wherever he was -- if he even can go back -- then it will be to exactly when, and where, he was when he left."

 

There's a quiet, shocked gasp from the doorway to Edmund's study.

 

Even after two years of enough to eat and a safe, comfortable place to sleep, Erik's young face still has the pale, pinched traces of neglect. Though he's got a few years on Charles' age, Edmund has a sense with Erik that there is something in the boy which will never grow older, never grow up. A piece of him will always be held static in the horrors which the rest of him has now escaped.

 

"Erik, wait!" Charles calls as the other boy bolts from his place at the door. Charles runs out after him, and Edmund follows as well a moment later.

 

Charles has caught up with Erik at the end of the corridor, where a wide window gives a view of the glittering ocean below. 

 

"There's no reason any of us should go if we don't want to," Charles promises reassuringly. "The Kings and Queens obviously need to stay here, because everybody else needs their help and guidance and all that. And I think maybe the way you managed to get here is because you're _different_ , like Raven and I are different. Maybe we weren't ever supposed to be in the ordinary world. Maybe we really are magic, like Tumnus said."

 

"Magic is for fairy stories," Erik counters in his quiet, flat voice. It was months before he'd speak at all, when he first arrived. "If magic is real, then this is a fairy story. If it's a fairy story, why did they have a war? And why..."

 

"What did we grow up so alone?" Charles finishes for him, his own voice soft. "I don't know. I don't have all the answers that you want, I'm afraid. But at least..." 

 

Charles takes Erik's hand in his own, clasping tightly. "At least we aren't alone now."

 

\---

 

Time passes. Or, at least, it seems as if it does. Erik suspects that Charles is right, though; that their lives are paused at the moment of their exit, awaiting their return. Even now, almost a full ten years since he curled in the corner of the cell which held him between experiments, and reached out with all of himself for any sense of metal, anywhere, and since he felt the shape of the lamp-post within his mind, and since he felt the world _jolt_ around him... even now, Erik has nightmares in which all of Narnia has been nothing but the desperate dreams of a child driven to lunacy as an escape from misery.

 

In the years since Charles and Raven arrived, the three of them have done their best to encourage and refine their strange talents. Charles has proven to be one of nature's born teachers, coaxing and guiding the skills of his sister and his friend towards their full potential. It's this ability of Charles', as much as Erik's own nightmares, which has Erik thinking now about the future.

 

Right now, such thoughts are pushed to the back of his mind, however, as the majority of his consciousness concentrates on one of Cair Paravel's chess sets of gold and silver, laid out mid-game between himself and Charles on one of the castle's numerous balconies. 

 

At eighteen Charles is clever, friendly, perhaps a little conceited, too charming for his own good, and one of a very small number of things which Erik loves without reservation. He's currently ruminating idly on religion in Narnia, the latest in a series of topics that Charles has studied over the years. Erik suspects that if -- _when_ \-- they return to their former world, Charles will end up as an academic. A professor, probably. A teacher of other eager minds. Erik has given the subject a lot of thought.

 

"From what I can gather, the White Witch was the child of a Lilith-figure, and fathered by one of the Nephilim. Then there's all that son-of-Adam stuff the Narnians say about the Kings and Queens. But then there's the fact that Lucy and Tumnus have met the god Bacchus at more than one of their Midsummer revels -- don't tell King Peter or Queen Susan about that, by the way. I'm firmly in favour of knowing as little as possible about what one's younger sister gets up to, and extend that courtesy to them."

 

Erik moves his rook across the board without touching it, putting Charles' king in check. Charles blocks the move with a rook of his own, but couples the defence with a sigh that makes it clear he knows the game's a loss.

 

"I'm going to leave Narnia," Erik says.

 

Charles, to his credit, doesn't pretend to misunderstand Erik. Instead he simply sits up straighter, his earlier rambling monologue and the game before him both forgotten, and simply asks "Why?"

 

"I can do more with my power than I ever imagined possible," Erik answers. "I believe I will be able to escape from where I'm held captive. We can find each other again. There must be others, who knows how many others. Perhaps hundreds or even thousands. Children who are like us, who are different. But not all of them will be as lonely as we were, as able to leave their lives behind without regret. And that idea supposes that they'd even have a chance to make such a choice, which of course isn't the case. If it was, Narnia would be overrun with sons and daughters of the atom, as well as those when came from Eve and Adam and Bacchus and the rest.

 

"Don't we owe it to those misfit brothers and sisters we don't yet know to go back? To build a golden age there, instead of simply living out our days in Narnia's?"

 

"It would be so dangerous, my friend," Charles says, his eyes wide with fear on Erik's behalf. "Dangerous to begin with, and dangerous on into the future as well, I think. The minds of people in our world are not so noble as the minds in Narnia. This will be a difficult road for us to walk."

 

 _Us_. Erik's heart leaps, and he gives Charles a pleased and happy smile. 

 

"You'll help me, then?"

 

Charles nods, returning Erik's grin. "Narnia would not be nearly so enchanting without you in it, anyway." 

 

\---

 

When Charles and Erik explain their plans to her, Raven feels conflicted. On one hand, she is pleased at the thought of returning to a world of movies and cars and soda and all the other comforts and frivolities she's missed. But she hates the thought of having to hide as she once did, of going back to a place will nobody will tell her that she is beautiful, that her differences are extraordinary and wonderful. 

 

Well, Erik probably will, but Erik hardly counts since he's strange too, not to mention in love with Raven's brother.

 

In the end she agrees, because she doesn't want to stay anywhere that Charles and Erik aren't, and she wants to believe that their dream of a better world for other strange children is possible. 

 

It's a tearful, painful goodbye that takes place under the lamp-post, with the Queens and Kings hugging and kissing them, and then crying, and then hugging and kissing them some more. 

 

As the three of them set off into the darker, thicker heart of the forest, Raven turns her face away to give Charles and Erik a chance to say goodbye to one another. There are a hundred things, a thousand things, that could yet go wrong with this plan they've dreamed up between them.

 

And then the woods get thinner, and Raven and Charles are tumbling out of the wardrobe onto the bare floor of the spare room, and they are children again.

 

They've barely had a chance to stand up and dust themselves off when Susan, Peter, Edmund and Lucy are landing in a jumble of arms and legs on the floor as well. They are younger than Charles and Raven have ever known them, and though it has been only moments here it has clearly been years in Narnia because there's another around of tears and hugs and kisses and tears again.

 

And Raven wants to ask Lucy about Tumnus, and their children, and if there were ever grandchildren as well, and so many other things. But before she gets a chance the door of the spare room opens and Mrs Macready is there, glaring at them.

 

"You found each other, I see," she says. 

 

That isn't the truth of it, though. Because Erik isn't here, and things won't be right again until they're all together. 

 

\---

 

When Charles and Raven go back to America it's with deep and sincere promises to write to the others, and with heavy, worried hearts. 

 

 _It isn't that we don't believe Erik will be able to get away,_ Charles can hear Raven thinking to herself. _It's just that so many things can go_ ** _wrong_** _._

 

They had no choice but to risk it. Charles knows this. But the wait is no less terrible for that knowledge. 

 

They spend the time planning how they will go about building a better world, finding the other strange children. What they'll study, who they will need to educate. How they will create a little bit of Narnia here, so far away from the Narnia they knew. 

 

They're sitting together late one night, arguing in the friendly way they always do, when suddenly Charles catches a whisper of the only mind in any world that he knows as well as his own.

 

Barefoot, dressed in pajamas and a dressing gown, Charles clatters down the stairs and through the house, out the door and across the grounds to the road. 

 

He can hear Raven following, and the flashlight she carries is all that keeps the night from being pitch black around them. 

 

Erik is younger than any of the memories Charles has of him, and is skinny and dirty and hungry and exhausted, and Charles would recognise him anywhere, no matter what, and he is perfect, he is beautiful, and together they will make a better world. 

 

Charles runs to Erik and hugs him, the force of the embrace so strong and unexpected that Erik stumbles a little in surprise before clutching back just as fiercely. A moment later Raven is there too, her little blue arms wrapped as far as she can reach around them both, and all any of them can think is _home, home at last_. 

 


End file.
